


The Awakening

by minachu



Series: Star Wars: The Brand New Hope [1]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Changing some things here and there to make this interesting to read, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Dyad (Star Wars), Force Visions, Force-Sensitive Finn (Star Wars), Force-Sensitive Han Solo, Force-Sensitive Leia Organa, Force-Sensitive Poe Dameron, Han Solo's A+ Parenting, Minor Leia Organa/Han Solo, Playing around with what I thought would be a cool way to tell The Force Awakens, Rey Needs A Hug, Rey is a Versio, Sad Luke, Slow Burn Rey/Kylo Ren, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 15:50:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26750152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minachu/pseuds/minachu
Summary: Rey has been living on her own for far too long on the isolated planet of Jakku, dreaming of her family that she believes to be dead and finding herself always reaching out in her dreams towards a stranger that she can't help but feel like she knows somehow. However, after years of waiting for her Jedi Master to come back for her, a little BB unit makes it to her first and sets her off on missions that gives her more answers than she could ever dream of.Or:Basically, a re-telling of 'The Force Awakens' with Rey actually having a believable family, making the Force Dyad less weird and out of right field, giving Luke a little more credit than just being a hermit somewhere, and just making some things make sense that I felt were left out.
Relationships: Del Meeko/Iden Versio, Finn & Rey (Star Wars), Leia Organa/Han Solo, Poe Dameron & Rey, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: Star Wars: The Brand New Hope [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947889
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! 
> 
> So if you're reading this, I hope you'll enjoy this fic! I've been pouring a lot of time in it to just get it to where it is now, finally happy enough with what I've written to start publishing it! Pretty much what inspired me was a combination of thinking about giving Rey some other kind of ending other than being a Palpatine and wanting Ben to have a little more redemption than he did in like the last half hour of 'The Rise of Skywalker'. Also, a good visit to Galaxy's Edge certainly puts you in the mood for revisiting some Star Wars stuff and really gets you thinking about how things could have gone if things were different! 
> 
> This isn't a word for word re-telling of The Force Awakens or how the other movies go, it's just me taking some of the basic elements and twisting it a little and having some fun with it. I hope you guys enjoy these beginning chapters and I hope you stick around for more updates! xoxo

The temple was in ruins as Luke stared at it, helplessly. 

He was too late this time, too blind to see the danger and too late to stop the destruction of everything he built over the years that had once been a beacon of hope. It was nothing more than ash and rubble now, the smoke billowing into the sky as only smoldering embers were left behind. The whole planet seemed to be feeling the loss, the hard waves crashing high against the island and thunder rumbling in the sky, threatening to put out a fire too late. All he felt was death around him, all marking a failure that he was too blind to see. 

But there was still hope. 

A small flicker of something still tugged at Luke, something that was barely hanging on from what he could tell, but it was enough to drive him back up to his feet again and walk through the rubble. Every step he took up the only stairs that remained revealed more death and destruction, such young innocents that he swore to protect, and all of them he failed because of his denial in his own blood. But the more he climbed, the stronger the pull felt, perhaps it was nothing more than someone’s last dying bits of life flowing through the Force, but Luke still had to see it with his own eyes to believe it. 

There at the top of the stairs, in what was the ruins of the temple all around him at the epicenter of the destruction was one small child, pinned down under a wooden beam and her eyes flutter open and closed. He raced to their side, pushing the beam off of them with all his power and pulling the small girl out of the rubble. The only child remaining of all of this was perhaps the only person who had been close to Ben as well, one who had looked up to him the most, and yet she was spared and remained here. He didn’t hesitate to heal the girl, the bruises and bumps leaving her body and allowing her to finally fully open her eyes. 

“Rey...Rey are you alright?” Luke asked, his voice hoarse but still staring at the little girl in shock. 

Her eyes slowly shut once again as she struggled to reply, Luke, knowing she needed her rest. He scooped her up into his arms and made his descent down the stairs, if Rey was all that was left, it was for a reason that he didn’t wish to find out. Right now all he needed to do was protect the one survivor, hide her where no one could find her - not her parents, not her sister, not Ben, no one. 


	2. The Girl on Jakku

Jakku was a place that certainly had to grow on someone in order for them to even begin to tolerate it. 

Between the blistering heat, the infinite mounds of sand, and general lack of any kind of civilized life was an acquired taste that Rey never really got. She could tolerate the people on a good day, and she supposed the sand was easy enough to ignore - again, on a good day - but the heat, that was another story. The heat was unrelenting, causing everything other than the sand of the planet itself to hold onto the warmth and make it even worse to maneuver around in. It was especially difficult while she was out scavenging, cleaning out what little valuable parts were left in downed Star Destroyers and TIE Fighters left behind from a war long passed. 

The metal of all the skeleton ships that littered the sandy landscape held onto the sun’s blazing heat, Rey almost burning her hands more than a few times on certain ships before she managed to buy herself a pair of gloves. The heat was hard, yes, but the burns were worse, and despite wanting to wear as few layers as possible, Rey learned that it was easier to cover up as much as she could while scavenging. Goggles to protect her eyes from the weather and when she had to cut something out of a ship, gloves for protection from burns, a head wrap to keep the sand out of her hair and face, and wraps down her arms to protect from more burns or cuts that could come from the mangled ships. The light colors were enough to repel some of the sun, but nothing could really cure you of the Jakkuan heat. 

Today she found herself in a hollowed-out Star Destroyer, the upper half of one at least that stuck out of the sand like a tall tower in the middle of nowhere, piercing through the sand dunes. A few old accelerators that seemed still usable and the heart of a warp drive core was usually good enough for a day's work, but Rey quickly discovered that this old Star Destroyer still had some hidden gems to scoop up when she noticed the communications still seemed to be intact higher up. Normally, she wouldn’t have bothered scaling up into the old ship, but she was getting close to her goal to have enough to leave this planet behind for good, and if these communicator parts were still as good as they seemed, she might be leaving sooner rather than later. 

With a bag filled from her hard work for the day before the true afternoon heat seeped in, Rey called it a day after harvesting the pristine communicator parts and loaded up for the long haul back to Niima Outpost, the closest thing to a city that Rey knew of around where she lived. She knew there were other towns somewhere off in the middle of the desert planet, but there were too many uncertainties for Rey’s liking to just get up and leave. Niima was what she knew, Niima was where she was left, so Niima would be where she stayed until she could go. Rey had to admit that she was tired of waiting, but all she had to do was wait just a little bit longer and Jakku would be nothing but a bad dream. 

* * *

While Jakku was harsh and cruel during the day, Rey had to admit it wasn’t quite as awful as the sun was setting. The heat would quickly leave and be replaced with cool breezes, you could see every star in the sky crystal clear, and for the most part, given where Rey lived in the old hollowed out AT-AT, it was peaceful. Scavengers knew their territory on Jakku, you never messed with others which left Rey out in the middle of nowhere halfway between Niima and the graveyard of ships and she quite liked it that way. Dinner for the day had been nothing more than the few rations Unkar Plott was willing to pay her for the parts she turned in, but she figured a few nights of smaller meals would be worth it when she finally left for good. 

It was just another quiet night, not a sound to be heard as Rey relaxed up against her AT-AT, looking up and counting the stars in the night sky and eating the last few bits of her dinner before she heard a droid-like screech break through the quiet. Droids were rare on Jakku, and one in trouble was certainly something rare considering how highly-priced they were as a whole or its parts. However, droids were the one thing that Rey refused to destroy or sell, she’d known a good droid once a long time ago and had a soft spot for them ever since - even the cruel landscape of Jakku couldn’t tear make her turn on an innocent droid. 

She raced into action quickly, grabbing her staff beside her and making a run towards her speeder, hastily tucking a stray piece of her long brown hair behind her ear not wanting to deal with it at the moment. She sped off over the dunes, quickly finding the source of all the droids beeping and screeching, seeing the poor round droid trapped in another scavengers net who was hitting him with his staff to get him to stop struggling. 

“Let him go!” Rey shouted, hopping off of her speeder as soon as she stopped and taking her staff with her to face the scavenger, coming to the droids defense. 

The creature scowled at her, not wanting to give up his new prize, but Rey had known this particular scavenger long enough to know she had earned a favor from him, not that he was going to like it. 

“I said let him go, now!” Rey said again, asserting herself by threatening her staff directly to his face. 

The creature grumbled under his breath, curing her name from what she could decipher before he finally cut the net loose. Once it was done, Rey lowered her staff and the scavenger drove off, leaving behind Rey and the small orange and white droid behind in his dust. Immediately, Rey knelt down and cut the net off around the small droid, trying her best to decipher his happy beeps since it had been a while since she’d come across another droid. 

“No need to thank me, I just can’t stand seeing what people do to droids on this planet,” Rey said, offering up a small smile to the droid as she finally cut him free, “You’re antenna is bent, want me to fix it?” 

The droid replied with another affirmative happy beep, causing Rey to smile a little more as he lowered his dome-like head down towards her to get a better grasp of his antenna. She carefully pulled the small metal antenna off to straighten it out and quickly put it back on, the droid beeping a thank you in return. 

“My name is Rey, what’s yours?” Rey asked, the droid quickly replying, “BB-8? It’s nice to meet you. How did you get here?” 

The droid was fairly quick, but Rey was able to catch something along the lines of,  _ “My master was on a mission and was captured, but now I have to return to base to complete it for him!” _ . 

To Rey, it almost sounded like a memory chip of his was fried, a droid spouting out information like that so quickly, but there was something in the way the little droid told her this that made her believe he was afraid, or at least as close to afraid as droids could feel. 

“A base? Are you a Resistance droid?” Rey asked curiously. 

The Resistance was something of a myth to Rey. She’d heard stories of it all her life, from what she could remember she’d even seen glimpses of it, but it had been so long they all felt like far off fairytales anymore. 

Rey could make out the droids beeps better this time,  _ “Yes, my master and I were on a mission for the Resistance, a classified mission. _ ”. 

Rey knew the little droid wouldn’t tell her more than that, safety protocol being one of the higher prioritized things among Resistance droids. He probably only told her those things to begin with in order to convey his urgency to her. 

_ “Is there a way off the planet?”  _ The little droid asked, interrupting her thoughts. 

“Not until morning,” Rey said with a sigh, “If it’s really urgent I think we can get you a ride off-planet with someone I trust.” 

It would be pricey to get the droid off-world, especially intact and with no questions asked, but Rey knew she couldn’t just abandon him, and if he truly was a Resistance droid, he would find any and every way to complete his mission even without her. It would be a setback, certainly, but at least Rey was glad she scavenged the extra parts today to help out with what was sure to set her back a few months. 

_ “I would be most grateful for your assistance, Rey! _ ” The droid happily beeped, seeming to perk up at Rey’s offering of help. 

“It’s no problem, we’ll head to Niima Outpost in the morning and see if there’s anyone good enough to get you off-world in one piece,” Rey said, “For now though, it’s getting late, we should get back to my home before the sun sets.” 

The droid beeped and nodded in approval, following Rey over to her speeder as she helped the little droid into her net on the side for larger parts. 

* * *

There was always this dream that Rey could never avoid at least once a week. 

It came to her every single time she fell asleep without warning, she’d always wind up in some strange and barren room aboard some large ship she wasn’t familiar with. It’d always be dark and she’d always wake up in her dream face to face with a man that seemed both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time, peacefully sleeping beside her. A mop of dark hair and a face she couldn’t quite figure out as to why it seemed so familiar to her. He was tall from what she could tell, taking up most of the bed that she found herself lying beside him in the darkened room. 

Usually, Rey never interfered with the man in the dream, choosing to peacefully fall asleep beside him and waking up only when it felt like he had left her side. But tonight she couldn’t hold back the urge to just reach out and touch him to see if there was more to this dream that she always ignored. Gently, she raised her hand and let it rest on his cheek, it felt so real that she almost pulled away instantly, not expecting something like that from a dream. She made her hand stay in place, felt the warmth coming off of him, and listened to his steady breathing. Before long, the man seemed to notice her hand on him, his brown eyes slowly opening to look right at her, half asleep at first, and then a face filled with shock as he jumped out of bed and looked at her with surprise and something that almost looked like fear. 

Rey opened her mouth to speak, but as soon as she did, she found herself awake in her small home on Jakku again, sitting upright in bed and gasping for air, shivering from the cold that had fallen over the planet overnight. Beside her, the little droid BB-8 beeped to life and started scanning her to see if something was wrong. 

“It’s alright, it was just a bad dream,” Rey said, trying to calm the droid down. 

With a few beeps of acceptance of her response, the droid stopped scanning and rolled across her home to disappear, only to return with one of her spare blankets she kept around the place and laying it down over her. 

“Thanks,” Rey said, offering up a small smile of appreciation. 

* * *

Ahch-To was a peaceful place to wait for death, or so Luke had thought when he first arrived on the small uncharted planet years ago. 

Instead, the isolated island only gave him more time to think about all the ways he had failed as a teacher to so many younglings and to his own nephew. He had the peace of mind of knowing that one was alive somewhere out there in the galaxy, though cutting himself off from the Force had rendered him unable to tell where she was or how she was anymore. But, he thought, perhaps it was better to believe that she was alive and not know whenever she met her end if that day ever came before he passed on. 

He cut himself off from the Force for many reasons, to avoid feeling the remnants of the younglings spirit in the Force of those he failed, to avoid feeling Rey and knowing if she was dead or alive, and most importantly, to avoid the nephew he could once call Ben Solo. If he’d done anything right in his years as a Master, it was to teach Ben how to be strong with the Force, to be able to reach into the depths and reaches of it that few could truly grasp. With his knowledge that Luke had taught him, he knew his nephew could find him all too easily, forcing his hand to cut himself off from the Force entirely in order to hide not only himself but to hide Rey. From the minute he’d taken Rey into his care, from the minute he introduced her to Ben and made him responsible for her teachings, he felt something in the Force he had never felt before. A connection so strong between the two of them that it seemed almost impossible for something like that to exist. 

But Rey was young when Ben left and killed all the others, her connection to him being the only thing Luke could think of that would cause Ben to leave her alive while the others perished. Her connection to the Force itself was nowhere near as strong as Luke’s own connection or Ben’s. Luke could still hide her without having to cut her off from the Force as well, but if Ben ever found him and dug through his mind, he’d find Rey all too easily. By closing himself off, he convinced himself, he was doing something good for the galaxy before he could finally just peacefully die and be remembered as the Jedi who failed. 

Peace, however, was harder to come by on the isolated planet than Luke had expected, regretting ever giving out a tracker to a close friend of his every time he heard a ship land in the clearing on the other side of the island. Luke always made his way across the island with a sigh, heading up to the ruined ancient temples whenever he heard this sound and found a familiar face waiting on him, sitting down and staring out into the wide ocean that covered most of the planet. 

Age had been kinder to his friend Del Meeko than it had been to himself, though Luke could still see the sorrow he carried with him deep down in his hazel eyes. His friend’s visits had become more frequent lately, a man who lost almost all hope still trying his best to find some little shred to grab onto every time he was out on a mission for the Resistance. Luke knew it would only be easier on the both of them if he would just let go, but Luke also knew that Del was never the kind of man who would simply give up on his family. 

“Are you here to try and get me to go back with you to my sister, or something else?” Luke asked, taking a seat beside Del. 

“No, that’s someone else’s job now,” Del said with a twinge of a smile playing on his lips, “You’ll have more company sooner rather than later.” 

“Great,” Luke said with a sigh, knowing Leia would never give up until he was found, even if he was just a shell of the man he used to be, “What brings you here then?” 

Del hesitated for a moment, taking a deep breath and keeping his eyes locked on the horizon. “Zay keeps saying she can sense R-...her. Keeps saying it feels so strong it’s like she’s alive. She refuses to tell her mother after what Iden came to you for, she knows I’m still looking too even if Iden has given up, Zay and I though, we just can’t let go as easily.” 

“It wasn’t easy, what Iden chose,” Luke said, “She may have asked for the relief of being freed from the Force but it wasn’t for lack of wanting to remember your lost daughter, it was to have something to help stop what magnified the pain of her loss.” 

“I know,” Del said, “Kriff, if I had any sense I’d ask for your help to, but I can’t leave Zay alone with this, I can’t just...turn it off...when I feel like I can still sense her too sometimes.” 

“Younglings who die are not like Jedi who die, they can’t fully come through the Force as full Jedi can, their connection was still too weak when they passed. Those feelings are probably just your daughter watching over you as best she can,” Luke said. 

“It’s just that it feels so...alive,” Del said, “It feels like she’s out there waiting for us to find her.” 

“Rey was stronger with the Force than most Younglings were her age, your connection to her is only this strong because you were her family, the same goes for Zay,” Luke said. 

“Does it ever get any easier?” Del asked, a hint of desperation in his voice. 

“From what I experienced, no, it doesn’t,” Luke said. 

“...Then I guess I’ll just keep going then,” Del said, “At least I know she’s with me in whatever way she can be.” 

“It’s always better to look on the bright side of things like this,” Luke said, “I have no doubt that Rey is with you and your family.” 

For a while, Luke and Del sat in silence, looking out to the raging water of Ahch-To, hoping to find some slice of solitude, only for both to know there was no such thing for them anymore. 


End file.
